It was 1976 or so when they knocked on the door of the apartment my parents were renting out to a young couple. The neighbors said people without uniforms came and kidnapped the terrorists. That was a time when it was enough that one's phone number was in the phonebook of a suspected person to be sentenced to death. May be they were in fact looking for me? The same day I burned all my books and went to the Venezuelan consulate in Buenos Aires to get a visa. Venezuela was then a most prosperous democratic country, with fantastic oil income, many young professionals were leaving Argentina and moving to Caracas. Others went to Spain, Mexico, Italy, Brazil. The consulate was crowded and I could not even get inside. I talked to the people in the corridor and got the impression that the situation was much more urgent than I had thought. People were crying of fear and desperate to escape. I had a valid visa to the USA and an open Lufthansa ticket, so next day I was in New York.
The point is that Venezuela has self destroyed and seven or ten million have escaped and found refuge in Colombia and other hellholes. Almost all the Jews have left for Miami, certainly those who arrived from Argentina to share Venezuela's (temporary) oil bonanza and safety. Venezuela has been thoroughly ruined by Chavez and Maduro, the currency is worth nothing (pic) and its prospects are infernal as its oil production is falling and the price of the oil - collapsing. I did not like New York, and spent time drinking in the YMCA, then took the drunk decision to move on to Israel. Israel just had emerged from a big war and I was not sure it could survive. I was always Zionist, but my Aliyah - like everybody's - was not a clear-cut rational decision. In my drunken way, I had taken the best decision. I am at home.
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